


Parcel Post

by missema



Series: Allyse Shepard, Space Cadet [9]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, F/M, Love, Love Letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-04
Updated: 2012-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-01 03:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missema/pseuds/missema
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Kaidan's apologetic email, both he and Allyse Shepard are left wondering about their future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parcel Post

Allyse scans the now-familiar words of the email one more time before she closes her messages.  Kaidan.  She never archives the message, always letting it sit in her inbox.  It feels heavy, almost like he'd sent her a package instead of an email.  

It's silly, sentimental, but she can't put it away, can't let go of that one offering of words.  There's so much hope and feeling in the message she got from him.  It's frustrated and angry, but the love is there, beneath the confusion and guilt.

" _When things settle down a little... maybe... I don't know. Just take care.._ "

At night, when she can't sleep, she composes responses to him, but nothing ever gets typed out, the words never really formed.  Sometimes she makes up scenarios, kisses that soothe the way her words can't, hugs that are more than any embrace has ever been, tears that she knows she'll only cry once he holds her again.

But the mission, that's what important right now.

In a way, she should thank him.  He woke her up from a stupor, an endless slumber that lacked purpose and passion, a colorless nightmare.  Now, she remembers, the hope that the has for them pulling her back up.  Her laugh comes easier now, as does her smile, but at times the malaise and general weariness pokes out, never banished.

She writes to him, a blank slate in her mind, and filling it with the words she can't send through Cerberus filters, things that are too personal for the Illusive Man to know.  The time she has to think, it makes her poetic in a way, and she tries hard to find just the right words.  There are so many thoughts, half-composed in her mind that it would fill a journal, all the letters she's written and never sent to Kaidan.

Thinking of Ash, Allyse reads a lot of Tennyson, trying to get the sentiments just right, committing passages to memory as she rereads them.  There are a million people that could say it better than her, that are more articulate.  Hell, even that krogan on Illium, Charr, is more of a wordsmith than Allyse on her best day.  This is important, these are the things she will say to the person that she still loves, even after being gone for two years.  With a wry smile she acknowledges the truth - even death didn't stop their love.  It had become permanent, fact, even during her absence.

Without even closing her eyes, she can see Kaidan's face in her mind, the whiskey colored eyes and dark hair.  Her skin recalls the touch of his hands effortlessly, body wanting only to feel it again.  There's never a time when he's not in her thoughts, perhaps not always in the forefront, but he's there.

There will be a day when she can give these words to Kaidan, because Allyse is determined to make it through the Omega 4 relay and back again.

 

Kaidan looks out at the still light of the stars, unable to twinkle without a planet's atmosphere to give it the effect.  He's wondering, thinking, praying, doing a little worrying as he does every time he thinks about her. Where is Allyse now?

At least if she were still Alliance, he'd have some way of knowing or finding out. There might be a message from her, some communication at all.  But with Cerberus, he has no clue and all Anderson could tell him was that she was going after the Collectors, whatever that meant.  Their old Captain hadn't been encouraged by her visits, his dejected body language telling Kaidan far more than his words.

There are always the insane reports he hears, sighting by people.  He's ashamed to admit it to others, but a few times he's looked at those extranet sites, run by fans that claim she's been all around the galaxy since she's been back.  Illium, Tuchanka, even the Migrant Fleet, he can believe.  When they started reporting that she was the newest dancer at Afterlife, the club that dominated Omega, he stopped checking in.

It's been months, and though he hadn't expected to hear back from her, he's still disappointed every morning when he doesn't get see her name in his inbox.  The chime at his personal terminal that signals unread mail has an unnatural hold over him, a resigned sigh all it gets in response when he scans the mail and sees nothing from Allyse.

Whatever fight she's fighting, he knows that it's worth it, because what else would she abandon everything for?  There's no reason, absolutely none at all to trust Cerberus, unless her enemy was too great to fight on her own.

So he keeps her in his thoughts, hopes for her safety and waits for the day when he'll see her again.


End file.
